LAURENT WARLOUZETa1 and TOBIAS WITSCHKEa2

A historical retelling of European competition policy is crucial to understanding the discrepancy between the rules in the treaties and their implementation. The historian must navigate treacherous waters between contrasting treaty stipulations in the ECSC and in the EEC Treaties, initial attempts at rigorous implementation but with limited effect on the ground, and a complicated relationship between the supranational institutions. Only in the 1980s did the Commission enjoy the benefits of the ECJ's supportive case law. These benefits came due to a fortunate conjuncture of political, economical and administrative factors.

Laurent Warlouzet is a lecturer at the University of Artois (Arras, France) and at Sciences Po (Paris). A historian of European integration, he has a particular interest in institutional and economic issues. To date he has published four books including: his PhD: Le Choix de la CEE par la France: Les débats économiques de Pierre Mendès-France à Charles de Gaulle (1955–1969); a working paper on the history of competition policy: The Rise of European Competition Policy, 1950–1991: A Cross-Disciplinary Survey of a Contested Policy Sphere; and several articles, including ‘De Gaulle as a Father of Europe: The Unpredictability of the FTA's Failure and the EEC's Success (1956–1958)’, Contemporary European History, 20, 4 (2011), 419–34.

Tobias Witschke is an official of the European Commission at the Directorate General for Regional Policy. In recent years he has been working for an EU Executive Agency and national and local authorities in EU programme management on budgetary law and procedures. He completed his PhD in 2003 at the European University Institute, Florence, under the supervision of Alan S. Milward, on the historical roots of European competition policy (ECSC) and the ‘reconcentration’ of the West German steel industry from 1950 to 1963. A revised edition of the dissertation has been published by Akademieverlag in Germany, Gefahr für den Wettbewerb? Die Rekonzentration der Ruhrstahlindustrie und die Wettbewerbspolitik der EGKS (Akademieverlag, 2009).

Footnotes

The authors wish to thank the editors, Bill Davies and Morten Rasmussen, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Responsibility for the information and views expressed in the article lies entirely with the author(s).